It has always been a dream of Medical Library to offer online access to a full text MEDLINE database for its patrons. Yes, this dream is now almost a reality! With our subscription to Ovid MEDLINE Full Text database, we will soon have direct online access to the full text of 41 journal titles. Furthermore, there are several unique new features for this database.
But first, let me explain briefly what is MEDLINE to our new users.
The MEDLINE database is the premier source for bibliographic coverage of biomedical literature and is produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. It encompasses information from Index Medicus, Index to Dental Literature, and International Nursing, as well as other sources of coverage in the areas of communication disorders, population biology and reproductive biology. The database coverage is from 1966 onwards with more than 8.5 million records indexed from more than 3,700 journals titles currently.
Medical Library offered bibliographic MEDLINE database service in CD-ROM format on standalone computers since February 1989 and through NUSNET, the campus-wide network, from October 1992.
We will be upgrading our MEDLINE CD-ROM database service to Ovid MEDLINE Full Text database produced by Ovid Technologies. It runs on the Ovid Java Client which is fast and has a wide array of links to maximize your search options. Ovid MEDLINE incorporates the latest database technology with full text in SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and also, Ovid works in close partnership with the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
MEDLINE Full Text links the bibliographic citations to the full text articles online including all the graphics (in colour where available), charts, tables and illustrations, plus direct links to references and related materials in other journals. The natural research process is extended through these links and you can instantly follow tangents and explore the author's reasoning by examining the source documents they reference.
The full text that you see is not just ASCII text or simple, static page images, but dynamic, searchable, hypertext enhanced documents delivered to the desktop. Every component of the full text document is completely searchable in its own defined field, for example, every text word, section heading, caption, and reference. Graphics are viewable in context, as thumbnails, or zoomed to show greater detail.
In short, you can move from a bibliographic database to full text and back again, view embedded graphics, examine a document's sections using the author's outline as a guide, and investigate additional, related full text documents. The concept of electronic full text is compelling. In electronic format, the complete text of the document can be shared on a network by many researchers, and can be made available twenty-four hours a day, every day!
For citations without direct links to full text articles, Ovid will automatically check the availability of these documents in LINC. This means that users, doing a search in Ovid MEDLINE Full Text database, can determine instantly which journal articles are actually available in the Library in the same sitting. It will reduce the time spent on checking journal titles
This feature will automatically analyse a user's natural language query and suggest appropriate controlled-vocabulary terms from the MESH (Medical Subject Headings) thesaurus for searching. Basically, it helps focus searches on appropriate terms and mapping suggests database-specific controlled-vocabulary terms in lieu of natural language queries.
Once the search term(s) are keyed in and the perform search function initiated, the vocabulary mapping is activated. This is because the system defaults to map term to subject heading. For example, a search on key words ”pulmonary bronchoscopy” retrieves the following list of related subject headings:
Your term mapped to the following Subject Headings: | |||
| Select | Subject heading | Explode | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| [] | Bronchoscopy | [] | [] |
| [] | Tuberculosis, pulmonary | [] | [] |
| [] | Lung neoplasms | [] | [] |
| [] | Fiber optics | [] | [] |
| [] | Coin lesion, pulmonary | [] | [] |
| [] | AIDS-related opportunistic infections | [] | [] |
| [] | Carcinoma, bronchogenic | [] | [] |
| [] | Mucormycosis | [] | [] |
| [] | Lung diseases, fungal | [] | [] |
| [] | Lung diseases | [] | [] |
| [] | pulmonary bronchoscopy.ti,ab,sh (Search as Keyword) | ||
Hints:
| |||
If the user decides not to use any of the suggested terms, a single click reverts to the original search query. With one click, users can turn the mapping feature on or off, and this setting is respected during the entire search session.
SDI (Selective Dissemination of Information) is a powerful feature used to retrieve the newest documents meeting your search criteria whenever a database is updated. SDIs are intended to help users stay up-to-date on a specific topic, learn of new documents by favorite authors, subjects, etc. With this new SDI feature, the user establishes a search strategy only once. Subsequently, the latest desired information is automatically emailed to the user with each database update. The user does not have to re-key their search, limit it to the latest update, or even know when the database has been updatedÑOvid handles these functions automatically. This very efficient tracking system will be a value-added feature for our NUS academic staff.
It is now possible to search the entire MEDLINE database (from 1966 to present) together, selective years, or the latest year. The choice is yours!
The Ovid Full Text collection covers leading medical specialty journals from 1993 onwards. Our core collection subscription titles are:
If you are all excited by these new features of Ovid MEDLINE Full Text and want to find out more, you can come to Medical Library with your enquiries or check out Ovid's website yourself at:
By February, MEDLINE Full Text will be accessible on the NUS Library Homepage (http://www.lib.nus.edu.sg), click on Library InfoGate (Web) and select MEDLINE.
| Next : Indexes + full text on the Web | New CD-ROMs at Medical Library |
| Library InfoGate (Web) | Contents |